by Greg Walcher, E&E Legal Senior Policy Fellow
The Daily Sentinel
The Washington Monument, Washington, D.C.’s most recognizable landmark, attracted over 2 million visitors in 1966, 1 million in 1994, and less than 250,000 by 2024. The National Park Service’s timed ticket system makes visiting the monument much harder for travelers, and the iconic structure is closed so often that it has become a symbol of government arrogance, a laughingstock among tour guides.
“Why have they closed the Washington Monument? Because they can.”
Closing the landmark to visitors has long been a favorite strategy for park officials to pressure Congress into providing more money. It is so common that it has a name in the dictionary: The “Washington Monument Syndrome.” Wikipedia defines it as “the phenomenon of government agencies in the United States cutting the most visible or appreciated service provided by the government when faced with budget cuts.”
It has been going on since 1969 when Park Service Director George Hartzog closed both the Washington Monument and the Grand Canyon for two days a week because of “budget cuts.” The public was outraged and Hartzog was fired, but his strategy worked. Congress restored funding, and closing the Washington Monument has been a tried-and-proven tactic ever since. It was closed during every temporary government shutdown, at least 12 times since 1990, and more than 25 times for repairs that take weeks, months, and sometimes years, such as a two-year closure to update the elevator in 2017-2018 — all tactics to get more money from Congress.
